In the sermon titled 'God Orders Worship' by Scott Brown, the speaker delves into Deuteronomy 12, emphasizing God's explicit instructions for worship. The sermon underscores the necessity of worshiping in the specific place chosen by God, highlighting the importance of abandoning idols and not adopting pagan practices. Brown discusses the significance of offerings, including burnt offerings, tithes, and freewill offerings, as acts of worship that must be conducted in the manner God prescribes. The sermon also stresses that true worship involves joy, family participation, and adherence to God's commands without adding or subtracting from them. It warns against the dangers of human inventions in worship, illustrating how deviations can lead to destructive practices. The overarching message calls believers to reject idols, prepare for worship, and recognize the comprehensive nature of worship that God desires, which is rooted in the heart and extends into all areas of life.

Our study this morning starts in verse 5, but I'm going to start from the very beginning, take a couple seconds to start from there. These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land, which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place.

You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things, but you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes to put His name for His habitation, and there you shall go. There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all which you have put your hands, have put your hands, sorry, and you and your households, in which the Lord your God has blessed you. You shall not at all do as we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. For as yet you have not come to the rest and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you.

But when you cross over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord God is giving you to inherit, and when he chooses you rest, when he gives you rest from all the enemies around about, so that you will dwell in safety. Then there will be the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall bring all that I commanded you, your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all your choice offerings which you vowed to the Lord. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in you and your sons and your daughters and your men servants and your maid servants and the Levite who is living within your gates since he has no portion nor inheritance with you. Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see, but in the place which the Lord chooses.

In one of your tribes there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you. However, you may slaughter and eat meat within all your gates, whatever your heart desires, according to the blessing of the Lord your God, which He has given you. The unclean and the clean may eat of it, of the gazelle and the deer alike. Only you shall not eat the blood, you shall pour it out on the earth like water. You may not eat within the gates, the tithe of your grain, or the new wine, or the oil, of the firstlings of your herd or your flock, of any of your offerings which you vow, of your freewill offerings or of the heave offerings of your hand.

But you must eat them before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord your God chooses, you and your son and your daughter, your man servant and your maid servant, and the Levite who is within your gates. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in all to which you put your hands. Take heed to yourself that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live in your land. When the Lord your God enlarges your border, as He has promised you, and you say, ìLet me eat meat, î because you long to eat meat, you may eat as much meat as your heart desires. If the place where the Lord your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, then you may slaughter from the herd and from the flock which the Lord has given you, just as I have commanded you, and you may eat within the gates as much as your heart desires.

Just as the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you may eat them. The unclean and the clean alike may eat them. Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life. You may not eat the life with the meat. You shall not eat it.

You shall pour it on the earth like water. You shall not eat it, that it may go well with you and your children after you, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord. Only the holy things which you have and your vowed offerings you shall take and go to the place which the Lord chooses. And you shall offer your burnt offerings, the meat and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God. And the blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God.

And you shall eat the meat. Observe and obey all these words which I command you, that it may go well with you and your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord, when the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations from which you go out to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them. After they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire of their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? I will also do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their gods.

For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it." Please bow with me. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you how you instruct us, Lord, how we should worship you.

Lord, please help us to in our hearts to take heed to your commandments. Lord, we thank you and we ask your word to speak to us as individuals and families this morning, Lord. Open our hearts and minds in Jesus' name, amen. I'm thrilled to bring this text here this morning because Every single line explodes out from it, the glory of the gospel. And you can see it everywhere.

This is about a people who are coming from all areas surrounding the tabernacle or the Ark of the Covenant, they're streaming in from all over the community to do one thing. They're coming to rejoice. They're coming to make sacrifices. They're self-consciously called to set aside their idols. The idols of their family, the idols of their community, whatever idols they have jurisdiction over, they are called to set them aside.

And so here is a text that really casts a vision for weaning yourself from idols and then turning to the only source of joy. So it's a beautiful text. And with every line of the text You can quote a Psalm, honestly, you can quote Psalm 5-7, but as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy, and in thy fear, and I will worship toward thy holy temple. You can sing Psalm 22-27, which says, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. You could turn to Psalm 29, 29, and sing, Give unto the Lord the glory to his name.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness. You could quote Psalm 45. So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty. For he is thy Lord. Worship him.

Or Psalm 66. All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee. They shall sing unto thy name. Or Psalm 81, there shall be no strange God in thee, neither shall thou worship any strange God. Or that one we've sung so many times.

Oh, come let us worship them down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. And we are the sheep of his pasture. And so we find this picture of worship in Deuteronomy chapter 12, and we will Learn about what it means to worship, how to praise, what are the various elements of it. And, you know, I just, I pray that as we're done with this text, that we would be able to say what David said in Psalm 84, How lovely is your tabernacle.

O Lord of hosts, my soul longs for you, and it faints for the courts of the Lord. For one day in your house is worth, you know, a thousand elsewhere. And so Deuteronomy chapter 12 helps us to recognize a number of things that we need to understand about worship and to realize that the worship of God is greater, more wonderful, more helpful than the affection for any other idol in this world. So it's a call to turn from idols toward the living God. And you know, as we've been in the last few weeks doing expositions on text of Scripture regarding the Sabbath day.

It's become clear to us how important it is for us to prepare for worship. And we prepare for it one way, by calling it a delight. You cast a vision. I know you've been doing this, because in conversations with many of us here, I know that you've been through the week casting a vision for the Sabbath. You've been looking forward to this day.

You have desired this day like maybe you never have before. You've been calling it a delight. There are physical preparations that are necessary in order to do that so that we would have a day where all of our concentration was upon the glory of God. And in the same spirit, Deuteronomy 12 calls us to worship. And so this marks the beginning of the second part of Moses' second speech.

And the first part runs from 5 through 11 and gives some general admonitions about loving God. Now in chapter 12, Moses starts drilling down into the details of obedience and making specific applications, moving away from the generalities and now getting right into the behavioral, the mechanical, the schedule issues that are in play in obeying the commandments of God. So in Deuteronomy 12 is a focus on the second commandment regarding worship. And he answers the question, what does it mean to have no other gods before him? And what does it mean to put away false idols?

And if we abandon these false idols, what do we do? What are we going to do in replacement of that? And this text gives help for us in that. And so after dealing with these general principles, in up to chapter 11, he now goes into the details. And there are two very clearly defined sections in this chapter.

The first, which Dan Horn dealt with in detail last Sunday, verses 1 through 4, calls for an abandonment of idols and it defines proper worship. So as we go through this, I want you to see a number of themes that are going to get played before your eyes here. And first is worshipping the way that God has prescribed by not adding or subtracting. That's the first great category. And you don't just find it in chapters in verses 1 through 4, you find it through the whole chapter.

And then worship that includes sacrifices and then worship that includes family and friends and the inclusion of a broad range of relationships that God desires for his people. And then there's worshipping with joy. This is true spirituality. This is the effect of the Gospel. Hearts are warmed.

There's genuine affection. True Christianity means that your heart and your mind melts before God and just in love for Him. In the Great Awakening, they called it, some called it enthusiasm, where you just had enthusiasm. You loved God from your heart. Now, as Dan said last week, which I thought was a wonderful way to speak of this, he said that this chapter gives you a way to have a taste of heaven, because it does give that.

And God does desire to give this taste. Now, this chapter contains 18 commands and prohibitions. And it starts off in this first section, as you'll see in your outline, with the admonition to destroy the idols, to destroy the places where idols are worshipped among the surrounding people, that you don't go to the same places that the people around you go and do the same things. That's the idea. Don't do what they do in those places.

In fact, destroy them and do something totally different. And so verses 1 through 4 really sort of, you know, press the reset button and say, everything ought to be for the glory of God alone. And so Moses is warning the children of Israel about the idols they will encounter and the care. In verse 20 he says, you shall be careful. Be careful.

This theme of being careful is all over the book of Deuteronomy. We find it again here. And he says, be so careful that you will destroy them. He says, destroy them, break them, burn them, cut them down. And then he identifies all the different categories.

Some of them are the kinds of things that you might have in your house and no one else will know about. Some of them are very public places. And he says, go destroy them. And that's true with the idols of our age as well. They're idols of the heart.

They're idols that exist in our families. Their idols exist out there in our communities, and we have to be very careful to understand that believers draw a line in the sand and we say, we do not go there, and we destroy them when they are under our authority. So Idolatry has to be addressed in different levels, the individual level, the family level, the church level, and the civil level. And we have to address them in order to fulfill what John said, little children keep yourselves from idols. And so we have to examine these things to see if we are worshiping properly.

Now, in verse 5, though, we encounter a little word. It's the word but, and that means that there's a change in the subject matter. He's given the foundation for it all and that is there is one God who has authority over all things. And then he says, but you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses. And then with this word but, he begins to detail out, he explains what he means by that.

Don't you love the way that the writers of Scripture help us by their organized thinking? They tend to give a beautiful picture that can help us see what they're talking about. And then we're not left without detail. We're given many details, and that's characteristic of this passage. Many of the books of the New Testament are organized that way.

You remember when we were in the book of Romans? It was very clear, chapters 1 through 11, the vision for the glory of the gospel is cast. And then from 12 through 16 is how to apply the gospel. Again, this chapter has a very similar arrangement, and it's such a blessing to have this wonderful structure. You know, Barry read this text out of Jeremiah 20, your word was the rejoicing of my heart.

Well, it is so, because it's so beautiful, it's so good. So anyway, he starts here with the proposition that idols need to be destroyed. And then he begins to define how worship should be conducted. And then, so he says, seek to worship the way that God prescribes. And so, what we need to understand is that God is saying, I am the one who regulates worship, not you, not the next creative leader that shows up.

He's not the regulator of worship. I am the regulator of worship. I will tell you how to worship. If you don't want to worship That way, understand that your own peril is at stake here. So God regulates worship.

And I want to give you 10 elements of that worship this morning. Now here's the truth. Here's the behind the scenes truth. I could give you about 25 of them from this text because there are so many different principles that are here. I'm going to try to collect them under 10, 10 categories to help us understand some of the principles that are here.

The first element of godly worship is this. Worship where God chooses. Worship where God chooses, verses 5 through 11. He says, but you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes to put his name for his dwelling place." And so what he's talking, this place of worship that he's talking about, I believe he's speaking about the time in Israel where all of Israel, the males of Israel and their families and their servants and the Levites would all gather to worship God. The Tabernacle was there, there was a place of sacrifice, It was the place where His name would reside.

We know that the Tabernacle was moving throughout the days of the wilderness. Then it was located in Shiloh, then Kiryat Yareem, then Mount Ebal, and then Shechem, and then finally in Jerusalem, the ark finally rested. And so this first proposition of worship where God chooses helps us to understand that there is a place for public worship. There are places that people go to do specific things to glorify God. And if you become a Christian, you must be involved in this public worship activity.

You have to engage in this kind of activity. It is true that worship is something of the heart, but it also includes places and God has his people go to certain places together. Just like he has us here today. We all streamed in from different parts of the community. He has us in his place.

God does that. This is an element of godly worship that God's people gather together in an institutional environment for worship. Now there's a great trend today, and of course it's always been in the heart of man to say, I don't need that. I can worship God wherever I am. I can worship God in my John Boat fishing just as well as I can in church.

In fact, actually, you might hear people say, I can worship God better out there. And so there's this idea that you can worship wherever you want to. And people say, you know, they can worship God anywhere. They say they can worship God everywhere, but the truth is they don't go anywhere with the people of God. They just go wherever they want to go.

And here, Moses is saying, no, there is a place that people go, and there is a design that God has in the establishment of public places of worship. We know what that is today. The New Testament is very clear about it, and we see the patterns of the apostles to help us understand how we might worship God, that there are gatherings of the people, there are specific things that happen during those gatherings. There's a reason why we sing, because that's what the apostles did and promoted. They commanded it.

There's a reason that we read scripture, because the apostles commanded it. There's a reason that we take communion. The Apostles commanded, so did the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a reason that we do all of these things. We do them because God has commanded them and those are the things that we focus in on.

And we try we try not to add. We try to just do those things that God has commanded when we gather together. So here's a call for families to fill their lives with rejoicing in a specific geographical place. And so as we subtract the idols from our lives, We add these other elements of life that God gives us. And this idea of worshiping where God chooses in the way that he chooses is a really important doctrine that we need to understand as a church.

Here's what's happened. The church in the 20th century totally rejected this doctrine and said, we can do whatever we want. We can create the church and make it any way we want. And so the church became subject to the next creative leader. That's what happened.

And so now you have all this worldliness, all this devastation. You have places that are called the church, but they don't have people in them that live anything like the church at all. The reason is they rejected this doctrine. And one of the propositions that we have as leaders of our church is that in the 20th century we rejected this doctrine. Let's not do it in the 21st century.

In fact, the ministry that I'm a part of, the National Center for Family-Agrated Churches, we planned a conference at the end of the year just on this subject to train children and parents and church leaders. What does this mean? What does it mean that God has authority over His church? Because He hasn't really had that much authority over His church because His leaders have said, we can do whatever we want. We don't have to be regulated by anything except for our next creative idea.

But here God says, seek the place where the Lord your God chooses. That's just a broad principle. We need to understand how to think about Scripture. First of all, we need to understand that Scripture is inerrant, that every word of God is pure. Every single word, from Genesis to Revelation, that's the doctrine of inerrancy.

Then there's the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, that it works for every area of life. It instructs for every area of life. And so we look to Scripture to create our lives, our family life, our work life, our church life. We look to scripture to create all those areas of life. And then there's the regulative principle of worship.

And that's where we are here in this text. And that is that worship must be tightly regulated. There are specific instructions. There are specific restrictions assigned to worship. It's very narrow.

So we're talking here about how worship can be conducted and God has authority over worship and it must be done His way. And that's why he says, whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away. He says that in verse 32 and he's already said it in chapter 4. But this care for the commands of God for worship is very important in this text.

So first of all, the 10 elements of godly worship. One, we worship where God chooses and in the way that he chooses. And then, verse 6, we find, and let me just back up. We worship the way God chooses, not the way tradition tweaks us, not the way our culture pushes us, not the way our preferences drive us, not the way our experience makes us. None of that.

It's God and God alone. The church today should be very fearful to step out of the lines that God has established for worship and look to Scripture alone and create nothing of your own. Okay, so the first element is worship where God chooses. The second element is to bring offerings. In verse 6 you find a number of things mentioned that you bring.

There are seven things that are mentioned. There are burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, heave offerings, vowed offerings, freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and your flocks. These are offerings brought, various kinds of offerings. So there's a, and this is a self-conscious bringing of offerings. Now the word tithe is in here.

We're not going to deal with it in detail here. We will though when we get to chapter 14. But just to make it simple here, my understanding of tithing is that there are three kinds of tithes in scripture. There's the Levitical Tithe that you find in Numbers 18. There's the Festival Tithe that you find in Numbers 14.

And then there's the Poor and the Welfare and the Celebration Tithe, also in Deuteronomy 14. And this tithe here has to do with a family celebrating before the Lord every three years. That's what I think this one is. But when we get to chapter 14, we'll really spend some time trying to understand the various categories of tithes and try to seek the Lord for what His will is for us regarding tithing. So, but let's at least establish this.

When you come to worship, you bring offerings. The early church did this as well. They brought offerings on the first day of the week for the poor and various other needs. This principle here was applied in the early church. But we bring our offerings.

We know that one of our dear brothers made a box for offerings that sit out there. Thankfully, when you open it, it doesn't ring. But it's there. It's there to receive offerings, because when we gather together, we think that's the time, or at least it's one important time to gather offerings. And so we bring offerings.

Then we observe a meal. Do you see that in verse 7? We observe a meal. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God." Now, there's wonderful language here that I hope we don't miss. And don't miss it for your own family.

He talks about eating before the Lord. Isn't that a beautiful phrase? To actually eat before the Lord. This is a consciousness in the function of eating. Consciousness of God while you're actually eating the things that he has given you.

He gave you a life, he gave you strength, and then he gave you this food that he gives you a hand to put it into your mouth. This is self-conscious observation of God's grace in a meal. As we take the Lord's table, as we eat our fellowship meal later on, And then we'll eat it again with this new church plant that we'll be celebrating with the Breggies. Let's do this. Let's be very self-conscious that we can celebrate before the Lord the gifts that He's given.

Of course, when we take communion at the end of our time here, what a wonderful way to just self-consciously acknowledge God's care. And we observe a meal. You know, it's a tragic thing for us when we get in these patterns where we're just mindlessly going through life. We're mindlessly working, we're mindlessly sleeping, we eat sleep, but we have no self-consciousness of the beauty and the glory of God amist of it. Here, a meal is eaten before the Lord.

What a wonderful way to live. And of course, this was a very special time for the family to have a meal and to very carefully acknowledge that they were before the Lord. That phrase, before the Lord, is a fascinating one. You trace it out through scripture, and you'll learn a lot. But they're eating before the Lord, under the Lord's authority, under the Lord's care, just very self-consciously understanding what they're doing.

And then number four, the fourth of the ten elements is rejoice. Rejoice with your household, verse 7. And you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand. Oh, Have you done that? Are you rejoicing?

You know, this is a call for whole families to rejoice in the things that God has given them to do. What has God given them to do? Do you curse it? Do you hate it? Do you wish you were doing something else?

Here there's a command. Rejoice in what God has given your hand to do. How easy it is to despise the life God has given us. And here there's the celebration to bring us back. No, forget that.

I'm not going to despise the life God gave me. It was God that gave it to me. And so I'm going to rejoice in that which I have put my hand to." He says, you and your households in which the Lord your God has blessed you. And so there's this beautiful picture of a family coming together and They're acknowledging the life God gave them. What a wonderful thing.

If you've not rejoiced with your family in the work that God has given, the hands of your family members, do it. Don't let days pass without gathering and just giving thanks for the good gifts that he has given you. None of us have a perfect life. None of us have a life that was created out of perfect holiness either. But still there's this command, to recognize God's grace toward us in giving us the works of our hands.

So rejoice with your household. That's the fourth element of these 10. And then the next is bring it God's way and not man's way, verses eight and nine. Again, we have this repetition of the same principle that we have encountered earlier, you shall not do it as we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. For as yet you have not come to rest, come to the rest and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you.

Now, what does this mean? It actually may mean a couple of things. It may mean that in the wilderness, as the ark moved, men had to do what they had to do. It may mean that. And there are a number of important men who believe that.

I'm not sure that's what it means. It may also indicate the independent spirit of man, the heart that's the factory of idols, always wanting to do its own thing. The people were living their own way and Moses was calling them to abandon their own ways. Things needed a change. They needed a new attitude and they needed to execute that in the promised land when they got there.

That may be what he's saying there. But whatever it is, either way, the spirit of what's written here is a call to humility, to order ourselves under God's authority, to be satisfied with his words, his ways, and to live under the shadow of his wings. When they were in the wild, as Judges says, they rejected many of these offerings. And perhaps Moses is saying, no, hold fast to the pattern the way that Paul said. You know, it's interesting that when we were studying the Sabbath, we recognized the fact that during the French Revolution, they abolished the Sabbath.

And they also did that with, they did that with these tithes and offerings that are mentioned here. They abolished every good thing. And so here again we come to this principle of God, desiring to regulate the worship of His people, to establish places of that worship and draw people to it to do specific things and not their own thing. And so that is the fifth element of godly worship. The sixth element of godly worship is offer what you have vowed.

Offer what you have vowed, verses 10 through 11. But when you cross over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit and He gives you rest from all your enemies around you so that you dwell in safety, Then there will be the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall bring all that I command you, your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all the choice offerings which you vow to the Lord." So there are offerings that come about because of our vows. We have a conviction, we see a need or something, And we say, oh God, I will give. I will give out of my increase to that.

And so here's sort of a mention of the proactive planning, the consideration that's given to giving. A family asks, what can we give, O Lord? And this is an activity that all believers should do. They should say, what do I have to give? I vow to give this to the Lord." And it identifies, it probably identifies a problem that we all have, laxity, in not keeping our vows to the Lord.

You know, if you know missionaries, if you know, if you're around ministries very long, you know that this happens all the time. Somebody ponies up and says they're going to give X amount, and it actually ends up to be half of that or nothing. It happens all the time. And that is actually reflected here. Keep the vows that you make before the Lord.

Well, and man. Do both. Is it possible that any of us have not kept our vows to the Lord, to God or man, in the things that we might have given? It's possible, because it does happen all the time. And Here, this area of vowing for gifts to the Lord is brought up.

So two things, just to leave this point. Let's be careful to creatively, proactively, prayerfully consider how we're going to give, you know, and then do it. That's the idea. And then the next element, the seventh element of godly worship, is rejoice as a family with the Levites, verses 12-21, And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion nor inheritance with you. So here we find that worship includes your family.

That's wonderful, but it's not just your family. It all includes those who are in your gates, those who are working for you, with you, and it also includes the Levites. It's not just for yourself. So, you know, there's worship beyond just the family unit that's implied here. It was a large feast and he gives direction, really specific direction.

I love this part. What do you do? What are you going to do? You're going to rejoice. It's a time of rejoicing before the Lord.

And who are you going to do it with? Well, your whole family and your servants and the Levites. Here's what Matthew Henry says, it's a great mercy to have Levites near us within our gates, that we may ask the law at their mouth and at our feasts to be a check upon us, to restrain excesses. And it is the duty of the people to be kind to their ministers that give them good instructions and set them good examples. I really debated whether I should quote that, but it's a beautiful quote.

But it really does reflect the way that people should be gathered together. It's the way that harmony works in a church, that an entire household comes together with the leaders that God has brought about. You know, it's easy for leaders not to be a part of the people, just to go be doing often their own studies or doing their own things, but they're just not mingling very much. This is really the opposite of that. This is mingling.

This is being a regular person, being who you are in the place that God has called you to be all together. And so it's a wonderful picture of gathering together. You notice here he doesn't mention wives here. Where's the wife? Where's the wife in this picture?

Isn't the wife supposed to go? What's she doing? No, she's fixing all the food, right? She's doing all the work. No, that's not what it says at all.

This is a mirror image of what we find in the Fourth Commandment where the wife is not mentioned. She's just implied as the partner, the helpmate, as a head of the household. So she's implied there. She's not left out of this Sabbath and she also does get to go to this meal because she's just obviously implied in it. It implies that there's a father and a mother and children and then, and that, and those, the heads of that household are governors of all that is there.

And I really just love verse 12 because it just gives such a wonderful picture of the way that we ought to be living together. You know, in a way, I would just like to say, this is a figure, this is a shadow of what we experience today. It's a principle, it's a godly principle of worship. And we have the opportunity to just apply it today. Where all of us together in this in this building for a period of time and then Whoever can go out to Southern Pines and go celebrate the establishment of this new church, we'll just keep it going.

We're going to keep this going on until we get home late at night. We're going to be so tired, but I hope we're so happy that we've rejoiced together as families, That even the servants were considered family. Do you get that? I hope you got that. The family of God is a wonderful place to be.

Because It makes your family bigger than it is now, and it also brings people in who have no family. It's such a sweet thing. I've said this a thousand times, and I'm going to say it again. Nobody ever has to be without a father in the kingdom of God. Nobody ever has to be without a mother.

Nobody ever has to say, I never had a brother, because you've got hundreds of them. God provides family that you never had, were never able to have, maybe you're barren and you can't have children. God, though, is kind. And He brings the solitary into families. This is such a wonderful picture.

But here, you have this beautiful scene of the people streaming together. They're rejoicing as families. And the Levites are there. And the servants are there. No one is left out, except the unbelievers are left out, I guess.

But it's a beautiful, beautiful picture. And then There are many other instructions that are here that, again, he repeats to eat in the location that God chooses in verses 13 and 14. And again, we have this limitation of where we can do this. And then in verses 15 and 16, eat whatever your heart desires. Eat whatever your heart desires.

That you can slaughter and eat meat within your gates, in other words, within your house, according to the blessing of the Lord your God, which he has given you. This is another way. This is happening in your house now. This is another way of rejoicing. And taking, it's really a call for families to take what God's given them and rejoice with it in their household.

And it's a beautiful time. And notice here, he says, you can eat the clean and the unclean. Did you notice that? You can eat the clean. I thought some animals were unclean.

He says here in verse 15, the unclean and the clean you may eat of it, of the gazelle and the deer alike, only you shall not eat the blood, you shall pour it on the earth like water. The only thing that I can make of this is it's reflective of what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 14, where he said, you know, those animals really weren't unclean, they were pure. That's what he says in 1420. And In other words, God made commands for what they could and couldn't eat, but it didn't really have to do with the nature of them. It was His command.

They had to fulfill the command. They had to believe in Him and obey it. But here, I believe, the way I understand this in verses 15 and 16, there's sort of a note that Paul picks up in Romans chapter 14. And then he says again, rejoice, in verse 18, do you see that? Rejoice before the Lord your God with all he has given you.

And then verse 19, don't forsake the Levite. He kind of repeats that again. The Levite shows up more than once here in this text. Take heed to yourself that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live in the land. And I believe he's talking about the muzzling of the ox, feeling for him, not providing for him.

And then eat meat if you desire. Verse 20. And then He makes recommendations for what do you do when the worship place is too far away, what do you do? And he makes provision for that. In verse 21, he says, if the place where the Lord your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, then you may slaughter from your herd and from your flock which the Lord has given you, just as I have commanded you.

And you may eat within your gates as much as your heart desires." So there's this rejoicing as a family with the Levites, and it includes a number of qualifications and instructions. Then the eighth element of godly worship is to offer holy things. And in verse 26, Only the holy things which you have and your vowed offerings you shall take and go to the place which the Lord chooses. And you shall offer your burnt offerings, the meat and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God. And The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall eat the meat." So here is an emphasis on the holiness of the offering.

Malachi has a lot to say about that, offering profane, sick animals. And this is a contrast here, offer only what is holy. What we have had done for us is that God offered a holy sacrifice for us. He offered His Son, He offered a lamb without blemish. We were so blemished and he offered a lamb for us that was unblemished as a sacrifice for our sins.

And it was a perfect sacrifice. And so the offering of holy things is important. Now when you think about your own worship of God, it must be founded on this principle, that worship of God has one single foundation, not your feelings, not your righteousness, but on the holiness of the sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ. Your repentance toward God, your faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, your recognition that it is His righteousness that allows you to worship. And I don't know if you can...

I don't believe you can properly worship unless you understand that first. Because if you come with your own righteousness, How can you worship? How can you have humbled yourself before God, not recognizing the despicable nature of your sins, your depravity, your profaneness, unless you come knowing that there's a sacrifice greater, that your prayers are inadequate, that your life is inadequate, that your deeds are inadequate, your family is inadequate, your business is inadequate, everything you touch is inadequate. There is one. There is only one hope in the world, and that is the perfect sacrifice of Christ.

He was the holy sacrifice. And if we believe that in the Old Testament, in the sacrificial system, every element casts a vision for the sacrifice of Christ. Every element of it tells us of the glory of the cross, then I think it's absolutely legitimate to take verse 26 and say, that's my Lord Jesus Christ, that is my holy sacrifice. And so offer holy, holy things. And then number nine, be regulated by Scripture alone, not adding or subtracting.

He comes back to this principle in verse 28. He says, observe and obey all these words which I command you, that it may go well with you and your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord. And so this means again that we cannot add our own inventions, that we can't make what we do more significant or more magnificent in our attempt to make it better, Or to diminish it in any way by setting aside anything, but to fulfill what is there. And that we would do our own work His way. And So this ninth element of godly worship is so critical, and that is to be regulated by scriptural not adding or subtracting.

Our problem here is that it's so very difficult for us to not do this. I would just like to suggest that nobody ever did this. Nobody ever was able to do this perfectly. And so you have to start with a heart that desires it and you must have the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ in which we recognize that we fall short in so many ways. You know, the truth is, even though we are bound by our culture, even though we are bound by our personalities and our experiences, even though we're bound by our heritage, we still must recognize that there is one way, and we strive toward that way, and we need to continue to be reforming in that direction.

Let me just make this very clear. We've not arrived in our church. This church has not finally found a tentacle of obedience to scripture regarding worship or life or anything. None of us have. But the heart of our church ought to be, oh Lord, help us.

Oh God, convict our hearts. Give us the courage and the faith to do what you've commanded us to do. That really should be the heart of the matter for us. And then the tenth, the tenth element of godly worship. Be aware of the terrible dangers of man's inventions.

Be aware of the terrible dangers. There is so much devastation in man's inventions and how easy it is to be ensnared. And what verses 29 to 31 say is, don't you see how barbaric it can get, how bad for people it gets when you've set aside God's ways. He says, and he says it right here, he says this, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, verse 30, and they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying how do these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.

You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abomination of the Lord, which He hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods." Now, he's ending this with a terrifying picture of what happens when you go your own way. Let's just say it's bad for children. Can we just say that?

It's very, it's very bad for people when you walk away from by one degree and into the next and into the next, you keep inventing your own way to God. And then everything seems to be acceptable because you invented it, because someone argued well for it, because someone had ways to explain it, and that's where you ended up. Because you were not regulated by the Word of God. You let the fanciful, vain imaginations and creative juices and desires to please and gather people drive you and what did you end up with? You ended up destroying things that God loves.

Here he gives an astonishing example, a way out there example, but know this, that's where it all goes. That's what he's saying. Don't play games with this principle because it's very, very dangerous. And you will end up just like the pagans of this world who care nothing, in this case, about sons and daughters. It'll have a big impact on the way that you see all the family life.

And even, I think, why does he give this example? I think that he gives this example possibly because who can even think of killing their own son or daughter? Who could think of sacrificing them? And he says, no, that's where it leads. Because you might sacrifice, you might not put them on an altar and kill them and burn them, but you might do something up here, up the line, that is actually of a trajectory in that direction.

And where does it all begin? What you do with your family begins with worship. That's how important worship is. When the people of God stream together, it matters enormously what they do. Because what they do, by this example, will have a dramatic effect on their family and how they view their sons and daughters and what ultimately will happen to them.

Worship has much to do with the family. It begins with the heart, but it spins out into every area of life. And so it's not an isolated thing. You don't come and have an inter-sanctum time of worship that's isolated from life and sing, praise Jesus, and then care nothing about God's commands. That's not true worship at all.

True worship is a genuine rejoicing of the heart toward God, and that's the beginning of life. And it all begins with the rejecting of idols. And it continues on as we do what is commanded by God in worship. And it follows on as we engage our whole family in the process and that finally it's characterized by true joy. And that is the worship that God is speaking about here in Deuteronomy chapter 12.

So I hope we can see very clearly these two great elements of worship. And the first makes way for the second. The second cannot be experienced without the first. And the first is, reject idols and determine to worship God's way. And the second is to rejoice from the heart and gather everyone in your realm together to do it.

And you'll see the blessing of the Lord. And so we find ourselves really back to the heart of the message in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 529. Oh that they had such a heart in them that they might fear me and always keep all my commandments that it might be well with them and with their children forever. Isn't God good to give us worship that is so wonderful for us all the days of our lives? Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for giving us this vision, this figure, this shadow to help us see what true worship is. We see our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling every one of these things and teaching us how to do it. Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us this heart, that we would fear you and keep your commandments in all of our worship. In Jesus' name, Amen.